Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing led the department in the number of stops, citations and arrests in the year he was patrolling city streets, according to the latest report on UCPD by outside investigator Exiger. Tensing also had the highest racial disparity among those he stopped than any other UC officer, the report stated.

The review came as part of UC's reform efforts in the wake of Tensing shooting and killing unarmed black driver Samuel DuBose during a July 19, 2015 traffic stop off-campus. The 26-year-old is facing murder charges in connection with the shooting, which occurred about a half-mile from the main campus.

Tensing arrested 26 people from traffic and pedestrian stops while he was a UC cop, an Enquirer analysis of UCPD traffic enforcement data from 2012-2015 found. That's four times the average UC officers made during that time.

Nearly 75 percent of the individuals he arrested were black, the analysis shows. The charges ranged from resisting arrest to drugs to warrants for other police departments.

Tensing gave 80 percent of the 146 traffic and pedestrian tickets he wrote to blacks, according to the analysis.

Traffic enforcement data was also analyzed in Exiger's top-down review of UCPD, which found the department's policing strategy relying on such stops to be a "significant mistake."

The review released Tuesday found stops were being conducted by UCPD in "unprecedented numbers" as part of former chief Jason Goodrich's philosophy.

Tensing's attorney, Stew Mathews, said Wednesday Tensing was proactive and aggressive in carrying out his duties. Mathews attributed the racial makeup of the stops to the area Tensing was patrolling, which he said mostly consisted of black drivers and residents. He also said each one was based on probable cause.

“Ray was an aggressive police officer as he was instructed to be because UC had a crime problem,” Mathews told The Enquirer. “Their theory was 'you let the bad guys know we’re out and about and hopefully they stay away and leave the UC students alone.' ”

Crime did drop significantly under Goodrich’s command, which Mathews said was based on "marching orders" to go out and make traffic stops.

NEWSLETTERS

Get the News Alerts newsletter delivered to your inbox

We're sorry, but something went wrong

Be the first to be informed of important news as it happens in Greater Cincinnati.

Mathews wants to see a deeper investigation of UC administration outside the police department. He said he wonders if UC is going to hire another investigator “to go on up the chain.”

“I don’t think chief Jason Goodrich operated in a vacuum without anybody knowing what he was up to,” Mathews said.

Days after the shooting, UC hired Kroll Inc. to investigate. In August, Kroll concluded the traffic stop was justified, but Tensing "made critical errors in judgment that created an elevated risk of serious or fatal bodily injury," according to its report. The Kroll report further concluded Tensing was not justified in using deadly force on DuBose.

"They hired Kroll to throw (Tensing) under the bus and hired Exiger to throw Goodrich under the bus," Mathews said.

Exiger's previous report concludes Goodrich acted alone in enforcing the aggressive use of traffic stops as a method of crime control. Goodrich declined to comment for this story, but said earlier this week that Exiger pinned the blame on him unfairly.

"I strongly dispute the allegations made against me in this draft report," Goodrich told The Enquirer in a statement. "I did not lie, and my experiences with the investigation leads me to believe it was a biased investigation."

Goodrich's superiors, President Santa Ono and vice president for finance and administration Robert Ambach, won't answer questions about how much they knew about the policing strategy or should have known about the strategy.

"Police chiefs are given a tremendous amount of autonomy," Exiger team lead Jeff Schlanger told The Enquirer. "In hindsight, would it have been better for (Ambach) to know, would it have been better for the chief to tell him? Yes."

In the year prior to Goodrich's arrival in November 2014, UCPD's traffic stops were averaging 86.5 per month. After he arrived, the monthly average tripled; and in the two months prior to the shooting of DuBose officers made more than 400 stops.

Schlanger said he's "virtually certain administrators knew that there were traffic stops being conducted," but there's no evidence that "people higher up in the university structure knew" about "the vast increase in traffic stops and most importantly the fact that there were proactive policing strategies… that were being employed."

He said it was absolutely the responsibility of the chief to discuss a change in strategy and why he didn't is "a mystery to me."

The report released Tuesday also stated UCPD lacked the data analysis and field supervision essential to ensuring that traffic and pedestrian stops are made constitutionally, calling the situation "dangerous and completely unacceptable."

The department also failed to offer appropriate training to guard against biased policing, according to Exiger.

"The undertaking of such significant increase in traffic stops, coupled with the lack of data aggregation and analysis as well as the relative lack of field supervision and training was, simply put, a recipe for disaster," the report concluded.

Tensing pulled over a car DuBose was driving because it didn't have a front license plate. He talked to DuBose for nearly two minutes, as seen in body-camera video of the incident. DuBose then restarts the car and appears to put it in gear, when Tensing reaches into the car with his left hand. Tensing then shoots DuBose in the head with the gun in his right hand.

Mathews has said Tensing fired a single shot because he feared for his life.

He has also said Tensing was dragged when DuBose tried to drive away.The Kroll report found that the car accelerated only after DuBose was shot and his foot pressed down on the gas pedal.

Tensing remains free on a $1 million bond. He is expected to testify in his own defense at his trial set for Oct. 24.